The international conference “New Directions in the Development of Creative and Media Industries” is not only a platform for scholars’ discussion on the past, present, and future of the creative and media industries but also one of the programs for celebrating the 50th Golden Jubilee of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is also one of the activities of the research project of “Mapping the Hong Kong Game Industries: Cultural Policy, Creative Cluster, and the Asian Market” sponsored by the Strategic Public Policy Research Grant.
Among all creative industries, games are one of the mainstream entertainment forms consumed by people from different age groups. Games have been integrated into the daily lives of citizens as a mainstream form of digital entertainment, a site of education, and even as a profession through different communication technological devices. Despite games’ popularity and social significance, games were misconceived as marginal and frivolous. At present, games are in fact one of the few most dominant entertainment forms in developed economies, one of the most lucrative creative industries, and the most profitable IT application. Investigations of the development of game industries and markets in different countries are therefore useful for HK. HK’s game industries urgently need the help of cultural policies, business models, regulation, and industry norms to propel them into the Chinese and Asian markets.
In this regard, this conference aims to conduct a comprehensive study of the game industries in HK and China from an international comparative perspective. Game industries (as an example of creative industries), game texts, new user and their experience, and cultural policy will be discussed in the conference.
Besides the newly emerging creative industries, media industries also respond to the changing technology, market and audience taste by evolving themselves into new cultural and media forms. The new business model and forms of media industries will also be discussed in the conference.
This conference, apart from helping to achieve the practical economic goals, will make an important theoretical contribution to the fields of media studies, globalization studies, creative and game studies and policy. The data and findings in games studies, and creative and media industries fields will be shared among scholars at the conference. We will focus on comparative analyses of cultural policies, regulations, creative clustering, industrial development strategies, consumption practices, and game markets of the countries from which data were collected. This conference is significant not merely for the game industries but also for Hong Kong’s other creative and media industries like films, pop music, design, fashion, and advertising that are facing keen competition from Asian competitors.